Longest-Serving L.A. Patch Local Editor Is Suddenly Down and Out in Beverly Hills

There’s something a little strange this morning about the Beverly Hills Patch home page. The familiar smiling thumbnail image and email address for local editor Marie Cunningham has disappeared.

That’s because we’ve been told Cunningham, Patch’s longest running local LE, decided at the end of another busy week to abruptly pack it in. As we reported earlier this week, she had recently been tasked with the additional responsibility of covertly overseeing West Hollywood Patch.

Cunningham, a Michigan native, came to LA in 2007 to attend USC Annenberg graduate journalism school, where she was awarded a Carnegie-Knight fellowship to do multimedia reporting on the impact of Prop 8 in California’s Central Valley. She joined Beverly Hills Patch in April 2010.